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Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

Good news: New Jersey's acting governor recently signed into law legislation that will require all voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper record by 2008. But New Jersey citizens shouldn't have to wait until then to be sure their votes count. Last week, EFF and a broad coalition of...

EFF and Coalition Back E-voting Challenge Trenton, NJ - In the shadow of a lawsuit demanding that New Jersey update state laws to reflect its increasing use of electronic voting machines, New Jersey's acting governor recently signed into law legislation that will require all voting machines to produce a voter-verified...

Cooley Godward, one of the largest Silicon Valley law firms, has an all-clients bulletin explaining the Grokster ruling that includes the following telling advice in its "implications" section: Litigation may increase and will likely become more complex. One immediate result of the decision is that many technology companies whose...

BayFF Public Forum in San Francisco July 19 San Francisco, CA - To kick off the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) 15th anniversary celebrations this summer, EFF will hold a special BayFF exploring the legal issues surrounding blogging. This will be a roundtable discussion, open to the public, and...

In May, EFF reported on the stealth attempt to expand the PATRIOT Act. That attempt continues, despite the public outcry. In an editorial published today, The New York Times slams the FBI's continued pursuit of dangerous, unnecessary subpoena powers: "When the FBI. wants access to private records about...

It wasn't long ago that alarmed parents had to force administrators in a Northern California school to stop tagging their children with RFID-embedded IDs. The IDs, placards that hung from the neck with the childrens' names emblazened on the front, would also have allowed anyone with a compatible scanner...

As Fourth of July fireworks fade, don't forget another cause for celebration this month: our independence from the Broadcast Flag. July 1, 2005, was the date set for the FCC's Broadcast Flag mandate to take effect. But thanks to a court challenge by Public Knowledge,EFF, library associations...

Whenever there's talk about blogging horror stories, inevitably the conversation turns to people getting fired for blogging. What kinds of things can your boss fire you for? Aren't there laws to protect you for whistle-blogging about the rotten things your company is doing to the environment? If you...

As mentioned last week, the post-Grokster world may create new concerns for companies creating technologies that enable new digital uses like "place-shifting." Because these companies forthrightly promote activities that should qualify as fair uses, but have generally never been ruled on by a court, they are put in a...

EFF Adds New Section on Labor Law to Legal Guide for Bloggers San Francisco, CA - Blogging can affect a blogger's work life in countless ways. Some people have been fired for things they've said in their blogs, while others worry that their bosses may be monitoring their blogging activities...

Big news. As reported by the BBC, the European Parliament has voted down the Computer-Implemented Inventions Directive, a law that would have given broad authority to the European Patent Office to start issuing US-style software patents in the EU. Rejection of this law is a huge, huge victory for...

Proposing a federal law to stop local governments from filling the pot holes with free municipal WiFi: Late in May, a member of Congress from Texas named Pete Sessions proposed a bill called the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act, which would prevent municipal governments from offering people free or...

Imagine if "Macworld" couldn't be used to name a publication devoted to Macintosh-related products. Sounds bizarre, no? Some don't seem to think so. EFF announced Monday that it has filed a lawsuit against French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis Group on behalf of Medical Week News, publishers of the medical news website...

Decision in Internet Ads Case Protects Consumers New York - The Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision this week that promises to prevent trademark owners from asserting control over the computers of consumers who visit the trademark owners' websites. The case, 1-800 Contacts v. WhenU, questioned...